violence has returned once again to the streets of cairo with angry protesters storming the presidential palace despite the deal between the islamist government position. internees of the funeral of a slain opposition leader is marred by violence as protesters clashed with police this comes against a backdrop of a general strike that has paralyzed the country. and president obama's nominee for the top position in the cia may be under criticism from drone activists but seems to have the support of lawmakers over his targeted assassinations program.

despite a final consensus on a reduced e.u. budget for the next seven years the agreement now faces a serious threat from the european parliament which is likely to ban the deal. coming up peter lavelle as guests debate america's use of drones in cross talk here on are today. hello and welcome to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle the nobel peace prize winner and his drones the recently leaked memo on the obama administration's use of drones has shocked many in the world and others it begs more questions than answers it would appear the white house is acting as judge jury and executioner obama can kill anyone anywhere without any oversight or accountability.

to cross-talk obama and his drones i'm joined by no sharkey in london he is a professor of artificial intelligence and robots at the university of sheffield and chairman of the international committee for robot arms control in charlottesville we have david swanson he is an author and radio host who works for roots action dot org all right gentlemen cross talk groups in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it you know we've been told that obama's drone policy is it will quote legal ethical and why do you agree with that because it's stored narita story no. i think that is quite extraordinary i think i don't think that he can kill anybody anywhere at any time either i think that was a slight exaggeration but he can kill anybody who is classified as being al-qaeda or any associated force so i don't think he would come and kill well at least if i

had to hide if i targeted somebody in al-qaeda i could be called an associate ok i don't think it is an exaggeration it's true yes that's true ok david if that is true but it would have to have some sort of motivation but i don't think a lot of the entrance through the need don't imagine i read the memo very carefully do they i mean how do you define it. i mean it's so vague i'm not i'm not a defender of the bomber i was just saying that i think it's a slight exaggeration but i think that my concern really is the we have to be very careful more talking to the public about the drone policy because this one kind of drawn used by conventional forces for force protection and really what i object to is the use by the cia to invade in the countries that the united states is not at war with and i can't see the legal justification for this they argue a lot of article fifty one which is that the idea that somebody has you know as an imminent threat and i don't think that some foot soldier loading

a couple of levels on to a truck in the yemen as much of a threat imminent threat ok david. i think your summary was actually an understatement not an exaggeration i mean this was a white paper summarizing a memo that takes it as beyond question that non americans can be killed with drones anywhere and seeks to justify the killing of u.s. citizens if they are abroad and even if they are not in a hostile field of activity although it seems rather an action and rather a hostile one to kill them if you ask me and so they're taking it as beyond question that they can kill americans if they are in those other areas the only place where they won't kill someone is an american within the united states and that may be coming but this is a this is a memo that says not just the president but any high official and it doesn't explain which high officials or what happens if two of them disagree but any high

official can can kill a u.s. citizen in these circumstances when that citizen is an imminent threat to the united states meaning u.s. troops anywhere imminent meaning eventually imminent and being defined to mean nothing whatsoever and and is a senior operations official in al qaeda or some aligned organization which none of the three americans that we know to have been killed by this program remotely qualify as you know what the this is a program that was used to kill a sixteen year old american citizen and his teenage cousin who had the bad luck to be next to him and no one has remotely made any claims that he or his father who was killed earlier and was on the list before anyone had suggested anything of the sort the the three americans we know to have been killed don't meet the qualifications so this is a this is a paper to quote unquote legalize killing some other americans no you're agreeing

ok because go ahead i agree with them but i was going to say i was going to. when i read the memo again it seemed to me that i agree entirely with what david just said i read the memo as meaning that imminent threat means someone that a high official decides is an imminent threat and that's what imminent means in this circumstance or does that make any sense to you it makes no sense to me whatsoever i mean the document really i was just saying that i didn't think you could kill me but the document to me was well don't go count on it ok all right under graham ok don't count on him and ok. ok well thank you feel much more comfortable on the way home on the tram i'm not going to say which train i'm getting on though but i think that the idea of this continuous warfare it started off with george bush declaring more and terror most of the rest most of europe thought this guy was an idiot what's he talking about declaring war on terror but i actually had legal implications when you read the white house documents it meant to

anybody who's associate with an insurgent noncombatant you know competent with a uniform organization is a fair target throughout the entire world so we know we've got many many dangerous precisions being set up but my worry is in terms of the technology not internal within the united states because i've tracked seventy six countries know that our gov got the technology and we're setting up the extremely dangerous pretty students here i mean what are we going to say when china decided that india isn't doing anything about the dalai lama so they fly a drone over and kill him what can we say then we can take the moral high ground for sure ok david one of the things that really bothers me you mention that sixteen year old boy who's accountable for he was murdered no one's held accountable well you know if i'm charged with murder here in a u.s. court i can't say your honor it's all right i've written a memo to liberalize it but that seems to be the understanding that is now

perforating the us media here is a program that we've known about for years we've known that men women and children were on the lists for years we've known that americans have been targeted and killed we've known that there were hundreds of civilian deaths and non targeted individual deaths and no one charged with a crime we've known that they've been doing double taps or they target rescuers the victims that they've been targeting people without so much as knowing their name and it's not just the u.s. government that's lost the moral high ground it's the u.s. public i saw a poll today that said that eighty three percent. of americans are ok with the president doing this to non americans but when it comes to u.s. citizens only twenty four percent say it's ok so you do the math what percentage of americans are bigots because there is a clear double standard here on who it's ok to kill and i think that twenty four percent would go up if

a lot of people knew that president obama already was killing americans because they don't want to oppose something that's being done i think it would go down if people knew who those americans wore the lack of any charge or evidence against them the manner in which they were killed and so forth but moral high ground is the furthest thing from within our reach right now you know it's interesting david brought up and i noticed this when we get preparing for this program is that americans get upset when americans are being killed but when it's not americans they don't particularly care anymore do they were ever i don't i wouldn't say that of all americans i mean surveys or surveys certainly my friends in america are very concerned and well course most of the people in pics within america are actually campaigners against this or the human rights lawyers but one of the tricks that have been pulled here that i don't like and that's been quite clear from the u.n. talk which is that they're calling this a war on terror means that you're not applying international humanitarian law that

might be the wrong law and many human rights lawyers will say to me that this is really human rights law and under human rights slow you've got civilians i.e. the cia and who knows who's actually flying the drones is that civilian contractors or what we don't know so under humanitarian law they're actually committing murder it is not even the collateral it's committing murder you know david we writing international law just throwing it out. at least america. well if these operations these operations are considered war when they want to talk about how it is somehow legal to murder individuals but they are described as not war when they want to talk about how it's absolutely unnecessary to get the informed consent or the authorization of the congress to get the authorization of the united nations to yes join in these operations only in nations with which the united states is at war so it's is they're trying to have it both ways you know

under the kellogg briana pact under a certain interpretation of the us constitution under the united nations charter in most cases war itself is a crime and so calling it war it shouldn't be an argument to excuse murder but i think no it's exactly right that they're also talking about it in terms of at least rhetorically they talk about it in terms of criminal justice where on able to capture this individual this individual is committing a crime we therefore are going to murder him and or her and anyone nearby and it's talked about as if it were criminal justice but this is an operation out of the white house without judicial oversight without legislative oversight without public input without compliance with the international treaties or bodies mean this is absolute lawlessness and the fact that you know a memo that you know of an absolutely absurd memo is now being presented to

a handful of representatives and senators but not to the u.s. public that that should make it ok with us is is an outrage this is a this is a white house that made public some of the more laughable memos from the previous administration you know what about these once you know it's a it looks like the obama administration just saying trust us. that's what it sounds like to me it will actually harald. the chief floor of the bomb in this ministration when there was that there was a bit of an argument in the un in two thousand and ten when philip alston who's the special extradition special repertoire for extrajudicial killings from new york university and he stood up and said he needed to know there would need to be more transparency about the united states was choosing the targets for these convert operations he was essentially told to mind his own business and he came back in november two thousand and ten with a thirty page report explaining exactly in what way no balls hold that thought hold

that thought we're going to go to a short break and out for that short break we'll continue our discussion on drones stay with r.t. . there are twelve cities in the united states in which half of the people with hiv aids lives within a year of a diagnosis of. over sixty two percent of those patients i diagnosed with this is a problem that frankly is substantially preventable it was like the big elephant in the room and nobody wanted to talk about they were really good public health campaigns that people were really focused on this problem you certainly should be able to have a lot less h.v. a lot less human suffering.

the. technology innovation all these developments from around russia we've got the future covered. mission to teach.

us.

we're discussing obama's drone policy. ok david if i go back to you you know when a part of the memo talks about the inability to catch people ok i sense that they don't want to catch these people they want to kill them there's we're told there's no trial we don't have to show any proof no evidence it's very cynical you know my suspicion from the moment that they announced you know they leaked to the chosen classified information that they'd killed osama bin laden i suspected that the order had been to kill not to capture and we later learned it became quite clear that that in fact had been the order and that as far as we know that is likely the

order in many such cases we have these raids happening every night they don't all involve osama bin laden and the thinking that we're hearing in the u.s. media and out of the obama administration is that it is more legal to kill people then it is to capture them and torture them as if as if the captives must be tortured as if these are options and so drones are an improvement on torture drones are an appointment of ground war these are the arguments were being given and yet we didn't have a ground war in yemen we might need one eventually after the damage the drone strikes are doing but this is bait we're being told that this type of murder is better then all of their human rights abuses you know would you like to reap spawn to that it sounds bizarre but true. no i mean we've been we've got no disagreement at all here and i'm in complete agreement with what david's saying on this quite

clear that is quite horrific in africa but it's getting worse i mean there's a new new drawn be a snow in nigeria close to mali you've got the west of africanized well and so it's trucking up so that we're going to have drawn b.s. was all over africa and i'm not sure would have really this is what's getting me why are we doing this well isn't it. the most effective recruitment tool for insurgents in the world david what do you think about that. recruitment blowback i got to agree with nola's he agrees with me i think that this is an operation that is part of a war on terrorism that is boosting terrorism and if you look at the opinions in pakistan and yemen of the u.s. government and the blame that's been placed on these drone strikes the reputation of the is united states seeking further if that's possible with a u.n. investigation of these drone wars or drone murders as crimes. there are

several bases in africa there's been no we've known for quite some time that there was this base in saudi arabia we didn't know exactly where the washington post is furious at the new york times for having identified the location of the base in saudi arabia because there was an informal arrangement not to what else if they informally arranged not to tell us and what if they formally arranged not to tell us and why because these are policies that the american public would begin to oppose if they understood them better and the rest of the world is out ahead of us these are not operations that are making us more safe talk about due process what's happening with due process so it's a pillar of western civilization. has been through in the way of sensually well i i was a good one how to put in a few words there david go ahead jump in. i miss knollys comment i'm sure i agreed

with it but you know i think the television comedian in the united states stephen colbert got it right when he said the new due process is just whatever process they do because according to attorney general eric holder there is no right to a legal process there is no right to a judicial process there is only a right to some sort of process so as long as three guys get together in the white house and talk about something that counts as your due process these are rights that should not just belong to u.s. citizens and are now being stripped away from them they should belong to human beings and there is clearly no legitimate process in the president assigning some subordinate to secretly decide that an individual needs to be killed and to decide that there is no means of capture who has to justify that who is to legitimate that claim that there was no possible means of capture we know of

a teenage boy in pakistan attending a. meeting where he was trained to use a video camera to go and film footage of drone victims see he was downtown in the city there available to be captured left town went to the area in the north of the country where the drones had been hitting and he was targeted and struck and killed with a drone are you going to tell me he could have been captured know it it seems to me that i know the kiss of the boy what about get mo that they want to get rid of get most if you don't have any prisoners you don't have any problem i mean obama sounds like stalin no people no problem. my my words least i got a hundred out of problems with can tom obey and the certainly when the recent killing the so there was a recent prosecution from the yemen of a man who had just been released from prison and two weeks later he was killed in the drone strike and his brother is trying to sue the united states because he said

he could have been captured quite easily on an informant from the do you do that he said it was too difficult to capture people live they didn't trust the yemen security and they couldn't bring them to the united states because it was worse to bring them to pay and torture them as david previously said you know david we know that prisoners get mo they were mistakenly put there ok so drones can make mistakes too. in fact the majority of the prisoners that have been held at guantanamo and labelled the worst of the worst have been exonerated and released and others have been exonerated and cleared for release but not yet released and there is absolutely no reason to believe that the level of so-called intelligence has improved dramatically between those captures and these kills in fact the temptation . is so much greater to kill someone with less evidence in fact in many

cases no evidence because you do not then have to have a trial or a military commission pretense of a trial it is much cleaner as the phrasing goes within the cia and so i think that the lesson to be learned from guantanamo is it is a very very important one right now. you know what kind of message is the united states sending the world. well it's not a good message at all i mean some people really approve off and some people don't really care less and there's a lot of confusion of by to but certainly i find in europe that there's a lot of descend a lot of complaints about what the united states is doing with what the cia is doing and i think is one of my real worries really is what's going on in the united states know this seems to be a change in presidential powers and they seem to be not you know who seem to be limitless of the moment and one example was when the libyan war would if you want to call it a war when when the libyan when a bomb a sent drones into libya. he didn't go back to congress under sixty days as he

should have done under the war powers resolution and hurrell co his chief lawyer said well there was no commitment to american troops on the ground so we didn't need to does this mean the president can just go off killing people go to war war powers resolution all those sort of constraints that are in the president are just going to be thrown away no i don't understand as a foreigner david do we have the imperial presidency now what nixon always wanted clearly we do with the war powers resolution that was put in place in response to the abuses and the secret war making of president nixon tried to encompass all military activity with the language wars or other hostilities and we had harold koh as as nor mentioned going before the united states congress and arguing that bombing libya would be neither war nor hostilities so these are non hostile bombs falling on a city the idea being that unless significant numbers of u.s.

troops are on the ground it's not hostile it's not a war it's something else that needs to be that needs to be addressed before someone like john brennan is given a promotion to head the cia i mean david didn't see any dissent is weapons being used david do you see any dissent though in the corridors of power. well in the uk a couple of years ago congressman dennis kucinich for whom i once worked introduced a bill to ban what is by definition banned namely extrajudicial killings and he managed to get six co-sponsors out of his four hundred thirty four colleagues in the house and a lot of that the problem there is is is the lack of resistance by the u.s. public which is so poorly and ill informed but with but with these memos coming out and with this nomination of john brennan you're beginning to see

a handful of house members and senators resisting drones and resisting the drone kill program and at the same time you're seeing pressure from below from cities and states and groups on the right and the left in the united states to the growing use of drones within the united states and so that you're seeing that topic raised in congress and that helping somewhat to open up this discussion but i would hardly call it opposition or resistance at this point you know i know it looks like you know bush isn't going to which is administer foreign policy is been codified now we don't see a change it's getting worse. it's got much worse and he strikes under obama have been much much greater i think it was a really was a good guy and terms of this but he didn't get reelected but i believe the levin senator signed a letter today but eleven's not very many freely there's not enough opposition and

so i think we could be united states could be painting itself into a lot of problems for the future and again as i say other countries have got this technology they're developing it really rapidly when countries are talking places that the united states have interests and i don't know what's going to be said with the wars will actually be triggered or want ok david i'll give you the last word in the program you know other countries who get these weapons and militarily soon. many many countries have got them and are beginning to use them and that disturbs americans in their xenophobia and their exceptionalism and that may help to change the debate i certainly hope so coup sen was not on elected he was redistricted out all right i don't know as i have run out of time just fascinating discussion many thanks today to my guest in london and in charlottesville and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time and remember top rules.

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